Monday, July 17, 2017

This article has been republished with permission from APPPAGrit Issue 91.
Wayne Herring is a sales team build expert and farmer: www.strongersalespeople.com.

Last issue I shared with you
some ideas for building your email list. In this issue, I would like to
share with you a few concepts about communicating with and ultimately selling
your products to your list.

One of our farm “products” that
allows me to work from the farm and not have a corporate job is my coaching and
consulting business, www.strongersalespeople.com. Lately, I have been
working to build the online marketing part of this business, and there are a
few lessons I have learned that are worth sharing with my poultry producing
friends.

Avatar Marketing –
Speak to Your Avatar

Avatar is a term used for
defining your ideal customer. It’s the customer you want to speak to every time
you communicate. Sit for a while and think about who your ideal customers
are.
Who are the ones who have money and will pay you, and who you love to
serve. Perhaps you can even list a few names. They may be the most
profitable or perhaps not. It is good to give your Avatar a
name. When you type an email to your list, do not write it to everybody.
Rather write and send that email to your Avatar.

Perhaps you want to hang a photo
up near your computer with a photo of your Avatar (real or an image from the
internet). Is your Avatar male or female, a Mom, a Dad, or a
grandma? What is their age? Do they have children? What are
their fears and questions? What books or blogs do they read or what
podcasts do they listen? What fears are they trying to avoid and
what rewards or outcomes are they trying to achieve? Writing emails that
answer these questions specifically for your Avatar (instead of everyone on
your list) will increase your effectiveness.

The Mouse / Cat /
Cheese

I am currently in a mastermind
group coaching program for consultants/coaches who work from home base (or
farm) that is hosted by Australian Taki Moore. Taki has taught me the
concept of Mouse/Cat/Cheese when communicating with my email list and with my
Facebook community.

Your Avatar or the person on
your list is the mouse. The mouse always wants to come out of that little
hole in the wall to get the cheese, but only if he rarely sees the cat.
The mouse will take the chance to get the cheese in the presence of the cat,
but not if he sees the cat too often.

The cat in this story is your
sales emails—the emails where you try to sell something to your list
member. It is good to make offers, such as come to the farm and receive a
free dozen eggs with the purchase of $25 or more of pasture raised
chicken. The cat has claws. If you want to sell anything, you do
need some cat emails.

The cheese in the story is what
your mouse wants, and they want good stuff. They generally want feel-good
stuff about your farm. They might want recipes. They may want
information to help them unravel the mysteries of food labels at the grocery
store. Your mouse probably wants to feel good about themselves, and they
want to feel like they are supporting your family and the community. They
want to hear about how their dollars helped you make a chicken back/neck
(“Stock Pack”) donation to the food bank. They want to hear how you had
some Fresh Air Kids or a scout troop or home school group at the farm.

So the trick is to send plenty
of cheese, but make sure the cat makes an appearance once in a while or you
will not sell anything to your list. What type of cheese emails do you
send?

Magnet Concept

This is a tough concept for many
farmers, who naturally care about people and who want people to love what they
are doing. The magnet concept is simple. Your message and your emails
must attract your Avatar, but they should also repel those who are not your
Avatar. Do you have any less than ideal customers? Anybody who
is a pain? Your messaging should repel them. You should celebrate the
qualities of an ideal customer and make the non-ideal customer feel a bit bad.

Magnets attract and
repel. Do you have people who are non-believers in organic farming in your
community like I do in mine? It is ok to repel them. If they sling mud
and insults, it’s no big deal.

You Must have
Unsubscribes and You Must Deal with Your Fear of Rejection

When we get either a subscribe
or an unsubscribe from our list, I am notified with an email. Whenever I
send a cat email or something that is a bit controversial and repulsive to my
non-ideal customer, I get some unsubscribes. Initially this electronic
rejection hurts. It always really bothers my wife.

The good news, however, is that
if you get some unsubscribes, it means you are doing your job! You are
working to sell your product. Certainly if there is a huge imbalance of
unsubscribes to new subscribers, you should probably chat with a farmer friend
and get some critical feedback. But some unsubscribes are good.

If you have any ideas for how you Love Your List, please email them to
herringgreengrassfarm@gmail.com and perhaps we can do a compilation.